Straight as the Crow-ley Flies

Words have power, names have power. There is a connecting web that
unites all things,
and our task is to find the pattern that connects, find the resonances.
These are basic
magickal concepts, not hard to swallow. Keep them in mind, youll need
them.

I read Gary Alexanders "Crowley in the Valley" article
in Paradigm
Shift (vol. 1, no. 1, July '98) with considerable interest, as I live in the area described in the
article. While I
am not overly fond of Thelemic magick, I am a Wiccan with a healthy
curiosity about what
is going on around me. Since I was not familiar with the island, I began to
pore over
local maps in an attempt to locate it. I noticed a curious coincidence,
which might have
escaped those who rarely venture out of their usual Balkanized mind-sets.
Esopus Island
was due east of High Falls, where Whitley Strieber originally had his alien
encounters. I
have noticed over the years that for the most part, people in the UFO,
witchcraft,
ceremonial magick, and Earth Mysteries fields do not like to see
cross-fertilization in
their meme-pools. I didnt expect many people to see the connection. I
certainly
didnt expect to find myself spending the rest of the next month
obsessively poring
over maps and geographical databases, finding more connections that kept on
repeating and
resonating meaningfully with each other.

While not all the connections fell on ley lines in the strict formal
sense, names I
found on the maps began to form a collection of inter-related concepts that
all fell on or
near the lines of latitude and longitude centered on Esopus Island. I began
to see it as a
symbolic landscape, one which was grounded on the earth but enveloped in a
web of words
that held meaning. They swirled giddily, forming knots that coalesced around
interconnected subjects: Crowley and his circle, HP Lovecraft, Egyptology,
classical
mythology, Mars, Whitley Strieber. Names repeated over and over, and when I
checked a
gazetteer to find out their distribution, in many cases they were clustered
in these
corridors with a frequency much higher than chance.

The modern concept of ley lines was developed by Alfred Watkins in the
1920s. He saw
various prehistoric features in the British landscape as a network of
straight tracks that
linked ancient sacred sites with significant geographical markers. For much
of his life he
saw these as trade routes, though some modern researchers such as Paul
Devereux have
theorized that they function as the straight paths for spirit flight in
shamanic practice.
The idea of leys as energy lines has flourished and mutated in recent
years, fostering
heady and unverifiable speculations about a planetary energy grid.

In the Esopus Island case, we have two main corridors, with a subsidiary
line of
longitude coming down from Madeline, California that links a surprisingly
creepy set of
locations. I have set the corridor dimensions as being approximately 20
minutes of a
degree wide, have made the assumption that a line passing through a town
qualifies as a
direct hit on the line. There are some towns which, because of their
borders, could
probably be considered closer to the lines, and thus this would narrow the
corridor, but I
was not able to document this for certain with the maps I had available.

Sink deeper into the words, see their structure, trace their lines.
Whit-ley the white
ley, path of the salt traders, according to Watkins. Crow-ley, the black
ley. Crow, an old
term for a grappling hook, echoed in the Red Hooks. Crow-line, the straight
line of a
crow's flight, echoing the straight lines of shamanic flight. Cole-black,
crow-black, the
ancient association of the name "Cole "with British ley lines.
"Cole-prophet," the Oxford English Dictionary tells us, is
"one who
pretends by magic or occult means, to predict the future, tell fortunes,
etc., a wizard,
sorcerer, divine,necromancer, fortune-teller. "The cole-man,"
said Alfred
Watkins in 1922, "who was the magician of the ley." The Crow-ley
passes through
Cole Street in Rhinecliff. The third line is the Madeline, named after the
woman who
stayed with Crowley on Esopus, introduced to him by Tony Sarg, the
puppeteer. Made-line,
the mad line? Topsell said in 1607, "There is a prettie comparison of
a harlottes
loue to a fisherman which putteth vpon im a goats skin with the horns, to
deceive the
Sargus fish." Which strings held by the puppetmaster, which ones held
by the angler,
who dances to the pull of the threads of destiny?

Listen to which words call attention to themselves, by dint of their
repetition. Red
Hook, Red Hook, 50 gallons of red paint to paint MADELINE on the cliffs of
Esopus Island,
along with other slogans. Hyde Park, Hyde Park, High Falls, High Falls.
Red red
Hyde hide red hide Red Mars, where the death of the planet
comes in falls
of rock from on high. The film of Madeleine plays at the cinema at Red Hook
just after
"Crowley in the Valley" is published on the Web. Madeline Drive,
the street
intersecting South Orange Grove in Pasadena, just down the block from where
Jack Parsons
lived. The hook, one of the pieces of sacred regalia of the Egyptian kings.
Red hide, the
flanks of the Sphinx in her youth. A geoglyph of Hathor in her cow aspect
on the ruddy
plains of Mars. Red "heid" , the red heathen in German, the
Scarlet Woman?
References to Soma: "A common metaphor for Soma is the bull, the
Rig-veda's symbol of
strength. `He [Soma] bellows, terrifying bull the hide is of bull,
the dress of
sheep.' (Mandala IX 0). In Mandala IX 97 we find a reference to the `red
bull.' Might we
assume that the skin of the [amanita] represents the red hide of the bull,
while the
woolley spots represent the 'dress of sheep'?" The russet hide of the
red heifer,
born of a black and white mother in 1997, which was hoped by many
fundamentalists to be
the flawless red heifer whose ashes could begin the purification process
needed before the
Temple could be rebuilt in Jerusalem. The Qur'an, Surah 55 says: "And
when the
heavens splitteth asunder and becometh rosy like red hide, which is it, of
the favours of
your lord, that ye deny? On that day neither man nor jinni will be
questioned of his
sin."

Ah, those mysterious jinni. Is it they who Whitley still encounters?
Igerna was tricked
at Tintagel by the cole-man Merlin, son of a jinn and a human woman, who
helped Uther
Pendragon shape-shift into the guise of her husband. From this magical
seduction came
Arthur, named as one of the revered Saints by Crowley. Demon-spawn Merlin,
pimping Igerna
so that he might snatch the magically-conceived baby afterward. Merlin the
falcon, sharing
that bird with Horus. Whore-us Igerna, be our Scarlet Woman in this magic,
anchor the
bloodline of the Dragon. The banner of the Dragon flies at the conquering
of Cornwall by
his white-lie lay, while later Arthur is said to be buried on the line of
the dragon ley
running through Glastonbury. Centuries later an old Cornish woman passes on
the oral lore
of her family, regarding a disaster on Mars and evacuation to Earth of
pregnant women,
using circular space ships. Anchor the bloodline of Igerna, who also
produced Morgan le
Fay, Morgan whose fairy blood ran hot.

One tale says that Arthur was star-born, maybe from those samples the
jinni so
carefully collect at night when their victims lie frozen in dream. A
character in
Tennyson's Idylls of the King attributes the tale to Bleys, a companion of
Merlin. Merlin
and Bleys walk outside, having just seen Uther die childless.

" from the castle gateway by the chasm

Descending thro' the dismal night - a night

In which the bounds of heaven and earth were lost --

Beheld, so high upon the dreary deeps

It seem'd in heaven, a ship, the shape thereof

A dragon wing'd, and all from stem to stern

Bright with a shining people on the decks,

And gone as soon as seen. And then the two

Dropt to the cove, and watch'd the great sea fall,

Wave after wave, each mightier than the last,

Till last, a ninth one, gathering half the deep

And full of voices, slowly rose and plunged

Roaring, and all the wave was in a flame:

And down the wave and in the flame was borne

A naked babe, and rode to Merlin's feet,

Who stoopt and caught the babe, and cried "The King!

Here is an heir for Uther! And the fringe

Of that great breaker, sweeping up the strand,

Lash'd at the wizard as he spake the word,

And all at once all round him rose in fire,

So that the child and he were clothed in fire.

And presently thereafter follow'd calm,

Free sky and stars "

These star-people, who are reputed to meddle in the bloodlines of the
kings like we
breed showdogs. These star-people, who think that Earth Girls (and Boys)
are Easy. Was it
they who spoke with Crowley almost daily on Esopus Island? Little LAM who
made thee, dost
thou know who made thee? Was LAM, whose portrait Crowley exhibited months
after his
sojourn on the island, a birthing metaphor? Or was the Big-headed One with
the strange
eyes later to visit Whitley eight miles west of the island? The Catskills
are so lovely at
any time of year, who can blame the star-people for coming back from
whatever dimensions
they frequent?

Follow the path of the star-people a little further west in our mythic
corridor, to the
Pine Bush area where they have appeared frequently. Note the towns of
Goshen here, and in
Pennsylvania, and in the corridor where it runs through Connecticut.
Goshen, the area in
the Nile delta where the Israelites lived while in Egypt. The place where
you live while
in exile. Osiris Lake Colony is in the vicinity too. Who were the first
colonizers, in
this area which lies at the same latitude of Cydonia, on long-dead Mars?
Right on the
Esopus Island latitude line is Ararat, Pennsylvania. Did the arks come here
and to
Cornwall, and to wherever their crippled engines could let them land,
filled with the
babies who would grow up to continue their lines of fairy blood with
whichever humans they
could glamour into coupling with them?

The Old Ones have been here a very long time, and the earth holds the
memory of this.
But are they poor wee Cydonian widows and orphans, or more sinister
wretched refuse? Mark
how HP Lovecraft lived at 5 addresses that are right on the Esopus Island
latitude and
longitude, and that a sixth home of his is just off one line. He wrote a
short story
called "The Horror at Red Hook," which features a Kabalistic
theme. Is this just
chance, or is there an energy flowing through the line that stirs up a fevered
imagination, which plants the idea that one is speaking with the Old Ones?
Who is the
Elder God who eats souls in the corridor running down from Madeline and
Ravendale in
California?

The Boreal Ridge is on the line. Boreas, the North Wind, north the
direction of Nuit,
protector of the souls of the dead. There is much need of protection down
this cursed
line. Near the ridge is the Donner Pass, may the gods have mercy on their
souls. Then on
either side of the Mad-line is Tragedy Springs (I know not what eponymous
tragedy struck
here) and Wilseyville, site of the tortures and murders of somewhere
between 19 and 25
people in 1985, may the gods have mercy on their souls. We move down to
Chowchilla, where
a bus-load of children ages 5-14 were hijacked in 1976. They were herded
into a truck,
which was buried in a gravel pit. May the gods have mercy on their
traumatized souls. From
there we encounter Coalinga, site of California's second greatest
earthquake in living
memory. May the gods have mercy on their shaken souls.

In this corridor too are names which are connected with the mysteries of
our time, the
eldritch lights in the sky and the mysterious visitors. Tranquility, also
reknowned as the
site where the Eagle first landed on the moon. Tranquility Base, (there
goes the
neighborhood), linked with strange Egyptian religious connections to the
Apollo mission's
timing and placement. Surely it could not be that Crowley's magician friend
Jack Parsons,
a founder of the Jet Propulsion Laboratories, had a hand in the shaping of
this, could it?
Just because Jack styled himself the Anti-Christ and did sex magick for the
glory of
Babalon, aided by L. Ron Hubbard the master puppeteer, surely this would
not reflect on
NASA's penchant for the use of magickally significant actions, even at the
present day? To
fix the otherworldly theme in this corridor, we have Whitley Gardens, and
at the end the
Vandenberg Air Force Base, named after a general reputedly on the
mysterious Majestic 12
UFO committee, which may or may not be a hoax, or dsinformation.

The lines are there on the map, the towns and features are there
on the map. Was
there a voice that whispered in the right ears, "Name this town
thusly, fit it into
the pattern " ? Are they just a meaningless constellation of
significant
coincidences, and my interpretation of the connections devoid of meaning
too? I look to
the synchronicities that happened in the researching of this piece. As I
pulled into the
Rhinebeck library to research William Seabrook, who financed the Esopus
Island expedition,
I noticed that my odometer figure ended with 666. I attended a John Anthony
West lecture
on ancient Egypt and the anomalies he has found there, and was startled by
his frequent
repetition of the phrase "white crow," as a signifier that one
cannot prove all
crows are black if a single white crow is found. Whit-ley, Crow-ley
, the
connections murmured. I looked on the map to see if my friend who lives
north of
California was on the line. He was not, but the first word that caught my
eye when his map
came up was the King Lam Lounge. A Web search for "red hide" that
brought up
"Erik the Red: `Hide " had a character in the conversation
named Pater
Illuminati. All through this process I kept finding more order and the
characteristic
redundancies of deep synchronicity, not more randomness. I began to feel
like I was
researching an out-take of a Robert Anton Wilson conspiracy theory.

I present no Big Meaning, no unified field theory. I spread this
information out before
you, you must draw your own conclusions. Take it as you wish, whether with
awestruck
space-cadet wonder, or with the appropriate level of ironic detachment that
allows you to
turn it into a parlor game of "Six Degrees of Esopus Island."
Perhaps its only
message is that of the act of making deeper connections. Perhaps, as Ben
Rowe has
suggested, the verbal part doesn't matter, but is merely useful to keep
your mind occupied
while the discarnate teachers work on you on subtler levels. May the
patterns you form
from this be part of an intricate dance that takes you where you need to
go.

The mapping information here was assembled from Microsoft Automap
StreetsPlus,
Jimapco's local NY county maps, and the Hagstrom New York State Road Atlas.
The online
Getty Thesaurus of Geographic names
was particularly
useful for showing the way that many of the place names seem to cluster in
these corridors
in numbers quite out of proportion to their frequency in the rest of the
country.

Some notes on the significance of the various sites:

Ararat, PA: Named after the alleged site where Noah's Ark landed.
Bible does not
precisely say whether the Ark contained squabbling Cydonian toddlers or
not.

Athens, NY: Home of unorthodox Egyptologist John Anthony West, who has
upset quite a
few assumptions with his theory that the Sphinx is actually thousands of
years older than
commonly thought.

Babylon Hill, PA: Articles on the infamous magickal ``Babalon
Working" of 1946
which Jack Parsons and L. Ron Hubbard performed can be found at
www.brotherblue.org/libers/babalon.htm. It has been thought by some that
this working
opened a door through which Things have been pouring ever since. Crowley
wrote to his
deputy in NY, ``Apparently he [Parsons] or Ron or somebody is producing a
Moonchild. I get
fairly frantic when I contemplate the idiocy of these louts." Parsons
was a founder
of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and lately has come up in the thick of
theories that are
trying to establish why NASA seems to be using occult signifiers in its
choice of landing
times and locations, as well as using symbols on mission insignia that have
peculiar
significance.

Beacon Hills, NY: A feature of classic British ley lines, the
beacon hills were
situated so that a line of hilltop fires could be seen from one sighting
point to the
next. The area in NY is now home to Paul Devereux, Earth Mysteries
researcher and former
editor of The Ley Hunter.

Boreal Ridge, CA/Boreas River, NY: Boreas was the North Wind in Greek
mythology. The
Getty Thesaurus lists only 8 place names in all with Boreas as part of the
name, thus 25%
of them are in our little Crow-ley corridors.

Cairo, NY: Named after the Egyptian city. Pronounced "KAY -ro
" by the
locals, one of many foreign names which they adopt and then customarily
butcher.

Camel Rock, CA: Roddie Minor, Crowley's lover and occasional weekend
visitor to Esopus
Island, was referred to by him as the Camel.

Catskill, NY: You really do not want to hear the details of Crowley's
boyhood
experiment to find out whether a cat has nine lives.

Chowchilla, CA: Site of a 1976 schoolbus hijacking. Twenty-six students
were sealed in
a truck and buried in a gravel pit.

Coalinga, CA: The 1983 earthquake centered on Coalinga was California's
second largest
earthquake in recorded history.

Cole Street, Rhinecliff, NY: Cole is a common name on English ley
lines.

Cornwall, CT: The tale told by the Cornish woman regarding the
evacuation of Mars was
found at www.geocities.com/~ulufudu (click
on ``strange oral
traditions")

Crowley's Corner (Hartford County) CT, CrowleyCorner (Middlesex County)
CT: Of the
small group of Crowleys found as place names, the two in the Crow-ley
corridor are the
only ones that are `` Corners," thus emphasizing their geometric
connection.

Cydonia: Region of Mars reknowned for anomalous features which exhibit
patterns that
strongly indicate artificiality, and which have stylistic or mathematical
links to Giza.
It has been theorized that Mars lost most of its water and atmosphere when
bombarded by
the explosion of the fifth planet, which formed the asteroid belt. It is
not known whether
survivors remain. See www.bemyguest.com/mars/release.ht
ml#links.

Donner Pass, CA: Site of the 1846 Donner party tragedy, which carried
Social Darwinism
to its logical extreme when snowbound without sufficient refreshments.

N. Elba, NY: Napolean Bonaparte, said by some to be the Anti-Christ, was
exiled to
Elba. In a world littered with claimants to the Anti-Christ throne, can't
we exile more of
them?

Goshen, CT/Goshen, NY/Goshen, PA: Goshen was originally the area in the
Nile delta
where the Israelites lived while in exile in Egypt.

High Falls (Ulster County) NY/High Falls (Greene County) NY: The
southern hemisphere of
Mars is brutally cratered and battered, compared to the northern
hemisphere. Think of the
bombardment falling from on high, the great floods sweeping the land as
chunks of planet
descended. Was great Atlantis on Earth, or elsewhere? Chicken Little was
right: ``The sky
is falling, the sky is falling "

Igerna, NY/Igerna,CA: Igerna/Ygraine was King Arthur's mother, raped by
Uther Pendragon
who shapeshifted into the guise of her husband Gorlois. Those pesky
Reptilians up to their
usual tricks? The Getty Thesaurus of Geographic Names gives only two towns
named Igerna
out of the 900,000 names listed. Both were county seats in 1895.

Jinni: In Moslem theology, a class of spirits that can influence human
actions. For
some interesting speculation regarding their place in modern Western
affairs, see
www.brotherblue.org/libers/jinn.htm.

Lamb's Corners, NY: LAM was an entity contacted by Crowley. The portrait
Crowley did of
the bulbous-headed LAM is surprisingly reminiscent of some descriptions of
the aliens
known as Greys. See www.brotherblue.org/libers/lam.htm.

Lithgow, NY: Surname of an actor who plays an alien on a popular TV
show. Taken apart,
the name splits into "lith" (the Greek lithos means
"stone"),
and `` gow," Chinese slang for opium. The Camel was stoned on
opium when she
began channelling the entity Amalantrah.

HP Lovecraft addresses: 169 Clinton Street, Brooklyn, NY; 259 Parkside,
Brooklyn, NY;
10 Barnes St., Providence, RI; 66 College Street, Providence, RI; 454
Angell Street; 598
Angell Street. Those cosmic conspiracy buffs with an excess of time to
fritter away and a
graphics program that measures angles might wish to explore the Providence
addresses and
see if the King Tut restaurant there actually forms a triangle with a 19.5
angle with two
of Lovecraft's addresses.

Madeline, CA: ``[Madeleine] stood out like a strawberry among a heap of
hips and haws;
a short sturdy figure trimly tailored, with a round smiling face, and an
ivory complexion
framed in that pyrotechnic display of hair." -- Aleister Crowley.
Aleister's blind
date on Esopus Island.

Lake Osiris Colony, NY: Another gem in our necklace of Egyptian
references. Hook and
flail were symbols of Osiris. There are only three town with the Osiris
name in the US.

Pine Bush, NY: Center of Hudson River Valley UFO sightings for many
years. The area is
thought by Dr. Bruce Cornet to be a replica of Cydonia. Similar claims have
been made for
Avebury. No claims have as yet been filed with the proper authorities
concerning Bayonne,
New Jersey's relationship with Cydonia.

Ravendale, CA: Under the Laws of Similarity, all the members of the
Corvidae may
be considered to be congruent , and thus part of the Crow-ley theory.

Red Hook (Dutchess County), NY/Red Hook (Brooklyn), NY: Only one Red
Hook listed in the
Getty database, and here we've got two in our collection. My, my. Lovecraft
lived in the
Red Hook section of Brooklyn and set one of his stories there. The movie
Madeline
played at the Red Hook theatre (Dutchess County) just after ``Crowley in
the Valley"
was released on the Web. However, Miss Clavel was neither one of Crowley's
Scarlet Women
nor the nun who gave birth to Merlin after an episode with an incubus.
Shame on you for
even thinking it.

Tranquility, CA: The Californian Tranquility is situated in the middle
of a curious
triangle of roads that cartographical aficionados might want to contemplate
with pleasure.
Thirty-three minutes after touchdown at Tranquility on the moon, Buzz
Aldrin broke out a
vial of wine and a small chalice, and made a small "religious
offering" (as he
later described it) while Sirius/Isis shone above the lunar horizon at 19.5
degrees. There
is, of course, no fnord occult significance in this.

Tragedy Springs, CA: Just seeing the name is like driving past a car
wreck on the
highway. Avert your gaze, if you can.

Vandenberg, CA: "By the way it was also Hoyt S. Vandenberg who
ordered the
destruction of a report, the Estimate of the Situation, which was produced
by the first
known governmental UFO investigation Project Sign which had concluded that
the best
evidence indicated a extraterrestrial origin for UFOs. Certainly he was
entitled to his
opinion, rejecting it on the grounds that the authors had not proven their
case. Yet
months after the report was declassified, all copies of it were ordered
burned. Burning
classified materials is the norm but it is not the norm for materials to be
ordered to be
burned after they have been declassified for several months as this report
was. No
authenticated copy of this document has been located to date." -- Gary
Alevy.

Whitley Gardens, CA/ South Whitley, IN: More Strieber references.

Wilseyville,CA/Wilseyville, OH/Willseyville, NY: It's all about Will,
see? All three
Wil[l]seyvilles in the country are in our corridors, as well as Wilsey
Square in
Ridgewood, NJ.

Carol Maltby is a soccer mom and witch, who is finding it increasingly
hard to talk
coherently with Normals since researching this piece. Visit her page on the Martian
Anomalies at
www.geocities.com/Area51/Dreamworld/3913.